Upon leaving the roars and hissings of the water, Father Hawk was assailed by the raucous howlings of wolves. They growled, grated, barked and haunted the world with their eerie, high pitched cackling howlings.
It was a sea of unrelenting, booming cries for death, ringing in booming blood curling tones.
Father Hawk was still engulfed in water that dripped off of him and was flung at him in hot droplets that fizzed from the lake’s surface.
His body was pinched in an aching pain that throbbed from within his center and shot outwards. He was too weak to move. His ascent was propelled by the soaking Eagle who took slow, but strong and forceful strides to flap his wings to elevation. Water leaked from his airholes. The blockage turned the roaring and howlings to hums, collective and distant.
Father Hawk struggled to blink away the water that dripped down and clung. Through the wet droppings were the blurred yellow lines rimming the ash-choked greenery of the trees. Smoke was a grey blur blanketing the sky and the edges of the treetops.
The yellows, reds, blacks, greys and greens intermingled in a murky acne of a burning jostled forest coated by the water dripping over Father Hawk’s eyes.
His body felt as if it were on the verge of giving out. He teetered on the edge between consciousness and unconsciousness. Weakness befuddled him. There was a flame of iciness flickering at his core, threatening to lash out and envelop his insides.
The claws tightly grasping Father hawk jerked with each flap of the Eagle’s wings. It was disorienting, nauseating. The world spun around Father Hawk as he hung, limp, his claws, wings and head lolling back. The burning, shaking trees smeared by water eyes spun around and jerked to and fro.
Father Hawk’s eyes involuntarily squeezed shut as coarse warm liquid pushed through his throat and beak. He opened his beak to let out the vomit. He grunted and moaned as the substance poured out, plummeting to the lake surface.
“Shadow-seer!”
The wolves yelled in unison, shouting that phrase of two words in their rough gravelly, barking howls.
“Shadow-seer!”
Their united clamor resounded all around Father Hawk from the rim of the lake. Their voices sounded like groaning trees, roaring waterfalls and crashing rocks.
“SHADOW-SEER!”
“SHADOW-SEER!”
“SHADOW-SEER!”
Father Hawk opened his eyes and moaned after the last stream of vomit left his beak. He blinked out the last drops of water. While water still dripped down his face and from his neck, he could see more clearly than before.
In his pinched fuzzy vision, Father Hawk saw a ring of fallen trees surrounding the lake. Some had been uprooted, fallen to the waysides of the forest or had crashed into the lake, where their bark and leaves dissolved into little brown and green bits in the streaming waters.
Many had been ripped off at the midsections of the stumps. Behind the edge of the lake were the raging fires of yellow and orange tendrils flickering and dancing through foliage and leaves. Some had made their way to the edge of the lake where they flared on stumps, grasses and groups of leaves.
In between the fires and ravaged trees were howling wolves. They were the grey furred, large snouted, muscular creatures with glinting yellow eyes that Father Hawk had fought before.
They edged the lake and crowded behind, deep in the forest, in hundreds. Their roaring rippled and blew their silvery fur, fanned by the many flames around them and shook the grasses, shrubbery and trees.
Their roars pushed at the lake’s waters, creating a vortex of bubbling water that met at the center, right under Father Hawk, where it swirled and fizzed upwards like a hill of foaming columns threatening to engulf Father Hawk all over again.
The trees were the size of Eagles and the wolves, the size of ants from Father Hawk’s height.
A wolf at the center of a pack of his comrades directly in front of Father Hawk’s lolling head stood up on a boulder, visible above the rest.
“Shadow-seer!” he growled. “You have seen and arisen from what most have been consumed by!” His voice boomed above the general rumble of “SHADOW-SEER!”
“Your dominion belongs with the Shadowspawn! You are the seer of both warring sides! Your powers do not belong to the righteous!”
The Eagle carrying Father Hawk buckled his legs, tucking in Father Hawk, bringing him closer to his chest. Father Hawk could now see the swarm of Eagle comrades who had arrived at the lake with him before submersion.
They were blurs of black bodies and wings, speckled by white heads.
“Your powers belong to the POWERFUL!”
The wolves rose on their hind legs, caught in an uproar louder than the last.
“SHADOW-SEER!”
“SHADOW-SEER!”
“SHADOW-SEER!”
Trees from the lake edge and beyond were ripped from their roots, snapped in half and flung into the lake.
Dozens of trees crashed into the lake. They resounded in a hot splash that cascaded into the vortex of water underneath Father Hawk.
It morphed into a terrific geyser that imploded under Father Hawk and the Eagles. Torrents and jets of water shot forth, just merely missing Father Hawk. Yet, he felt their hot wrath.
“RISE!” shouted the Eagles frantically flapping above.
Father Hawk’s rescuer flapped furiously, this time flapping front and back, propelling away from the lake.
All the Eagles formed a line swiftly passing over the lake, over the burning treetops and their missing neighbors.
“No,” croaked Father Hawk. His eyes bulged. “Fight………..them,” he managed.
“It is not time to fight!” said his rescuer. They left the lake and entered the space above the decimated woodlands.
“It is time to rest.”
G.R. Nanda 